Security may trump ethnic divide in Iraqi city

Kurds have long sought to annex Kirkuk and its environs to their calm region. Some Arabs are seeing it as a good idea.

KIRKUK, IRAQ — A staunch Arab nationalist, Ismail Hadidi once dreaded the possibility that his ethnically diverse city would be swallowed up by the neighboring semiautonomous Kurdish region and cut off from the Baghdad government.

But the provincial councilman is also a practical man. And when he compares the chaos and violence in the Iraqi capital with the prosperity and peace next door in the three-province Kurdistan Regional Government area, teaming up with the Kurds doesn't seem like such a bad idea. He's even considering buying some property in the Kurdish enclave.

"The people of Kirkuk were afraid of this," said Hadidi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader. "But given the situation, I believe most people will move toward being part of Kurdistan, because what the people want above all is security."

Uncertainty clouds Iraq's future, but not so much here. The Kurdish region's exploding economic and political power has begun to shape northern Iraq's reality.

Oil-rich and ethnically diverse Kirkuk, the capital of Tamim province, was billed as northern Iraq's most contested prize in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and its fate was to be resolved by the new Iraqi Constitution, which instead mandated a referendum. But that hasn't happened yet. And now, just as medieval peasants clung to local warlords who could protect them from looters and bandits, this gritty city's war- and poverty-ravaged population has begun gravitating toward the Kurds, who are hungrily reclaiming territory lost to successive waves of Arabization.

Few doubt what will happen when U.S. forces exit. Grown strong and rich in their enclave of more than 16,000 square miles, Iraq's Kurds will rush to annex Tamim and other areas in Diyala and Nineveh provinces they have laid claim to, which could double the size of their de facto state.

"The Kurdistan region will include all parts of Iraq that are historically and geographically part of Kurdistan," predicted Omer Fattah, deputy premier of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which is based in Irbil.

Hussein and leaders of earlier Arab-dominated Baghdad governments sought to upend the oil-rich region's ethnic balance by forcibly evicting tens of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arab minorities and replacing them with Arab settlers. A referendum on whether Kirkuk and its outlying province will join the Kurdish region is scheduled to take place by year's end.

However, many doubt the vote will be held. Politicians in Baghdad said this week it can't be held until well into 2008. Kurds blame the delays on U.S. reluctance to address an explosive Iraqi political issue. At the same time, Kurds say the Americans are increasingly less of a factor in the north. Kirkuk security officials say U.S. forces have already moved from the city to more volatile Baghdad and central Iraq.

A U.S. Army spokesman in Kirkuk skirted the question of redeployment. "Our brigade remains committed to providing security and partnering with Iraqi forces to maintain stability in the Kirkuk province," said Maj. Derrick W. Cheng of the 31st Brigade Combat Team in response to an e-mail query.

Kurds say they don't mind the Americans leaving. "We are thinking about it and preparing for it," said Abdul-Salaam Berwari, who runs a think tank close to the Kurdish leadership. "It's OK for us if they do that."

Kurdish officials suggest that it might be better if the U.S. pulled out of day-to-day operations in the north. Without Washington's political obligations to fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Turkey, which fears Kurdish regional ambitions, many Kurds believe they can resolve the Kirkuk dilemma themselves.

"You'll never find a single Kurd willing to give up Kirkuk whether the Americans are here or not," said one official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq. He spoke anonymously because he said his view and that of many others was not the official Kurdish position.

Just as Kurds exploited Iraq's chaos after the 1991 Gulf War to build their enclave, they've begun quietly incorporating Tamim province and reversing the Arab migration.

Kurds have also in effect taken up security duties in other traditionally Kurdish lands and villages, including oil-rich Makhmour, northwest of Kirkuk, and Khanaqin, farther south in Diyala province. Kurds emphasize that the bombings that killed at least 400 Yazidis, a religious minority that is ethnically Kurdish, last month fell just outside the zone of Kurdish control.

Already at least 58,000 Arabs have left the Kirkuk region, said Kamal Kirkuki, deputy speaker of the Kurdish parliament. He said the Kurds have collected a trove of documents to determine who belongs in Kirkuk and who does not, including records of all Arabs who arrived in Kirkuk from 1968, when Hussein's Baath Party consolidated power, to the Iraqi leader's ouster in 2003.

"We could solve the Kirkuk issue in one minute," Kirkuki said. "All we need is a political decision."